GMDGeoscientific Model DevelopmentGMDGeosci. Model Dev.1991-9603Copernicus PublicationsGöttingen, Germany10.5194/gmd-5-1341-2012Development of high resolution land surface parameters for the Community Land ModelKeY.12LeungL. R.1HuangM.1ColemanA. M.1LiH.1WigmostaM. S.11Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 902 Battelle Boulevard, Richland WA, 99352, USA2Department of Resource Environment and Tourism, Capital Normal University, 105 Xi San Huan Bei Lu, Beijing, 100048, China061120125613411362This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/This article is available from http://www.geosci-model-dev.net/5/1341/2012/gmd-5-1341-2012.htmlThe full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.geosci-model-dev.net/5/1341/2012/gmd-5-1341-2012.pdf

There is a growing need for high-resolution land surface parameters as land
surface models are being applied at increasingly higher spatial resolution
offline as well as in regional and global models. The default land surface
parameters for the most recent version of the Community Land Model (i.e. CLM 4.0) are at 0.5° or coarser resolutions, released with the
Community Earth System Model (CESM). Plant Functional Types (PFTs),
vegetation properties such as Leaf Area Index (LAI), Stem Area Index (SAI),
and non-vegetated land covers were developed using remotely sensed datasets
retrieved in late 1990's and the beginning of this century. In this study,
we developed new land surface parameters for CLM 4.0, specifically PFTs,
LAI, SAI and non-vegetated land cover composition, at 0.05°
resolution globally based on the most recent MODIS land cover and improved
MODIS LAI products. Compared to the current CLM 4.0 parameters, the new
parameters produced a decreased coverage by bare soil and trees, but an
increased coverage by shrub, grass, and cropland. The new parameters result
in a decrease in global seasonal LAI, with the biggest decrease in boreal
forests; however, the new parameters also show a large increase in LAI in
tropical forest. Differences between the new and the current parameters are
mainly caused by changes in the sources of remotely sensed data and the
representation of land cover in the source data. Advantages and
disadvantages of each dataset were discussed in order to provide guidance on
the use of the data. The new high-resolution land surface parameters have
been used in a coupled land-atmosphere model (WRF-CLM) applied to the
western US to demonstrate their use in high-resolution modeling. A
remapping method from the latitude/longitude grid of the CLM data to the WRF
grids with map projection was also demonstrated. Future work will include
global offline CLM simulations to examine the impacts of source data
resolution and subsequent land parameter changes on simulated land surface
processes.